It is well known that beekeeping is an extremely ancient art and that the hive arrangements used therein have widely variable configurations from one location or time to another. For example, in former times one standard beehive was of such nature as to require complete destruction of the bee colony therein in order to recover the honey. In more modern times, hives have been designed to facilitate continuity of the colony. These latter thus provide for harvesting of both honey and wax without harm to the colony and ensure, according to the judgment of the beekeeper, the preservation to the colony of sufficient living space and honey to enable it to continue in a healthy manner from year to year.
In the development of this latter approach to beekeeping, a wide range of specific hive structures has been proposed from time to time but commercial beekeeping operations have at the present time fairly uniformly settled on the so-called Langstroth hive which hive has been well known for many years. This has in turn been subject to many modifications, such as the Aspinwall anti-swarming hive, but on the whole the Langstroth hive has served well for many years the several functions required for both commercial and hobby beekeeping and today represents, in one or another of its various modifications, the standard hive utilized by beekeepers.
There are, however, a number of disadvantages with the Langstroth hive which have been well known for a long time. Chief among these is the inability to reach the comb frames of any hive body or super, excepting from the top thereof which in each case necessitates the removal of the cover, the inner cover if one is used, and whatever number of supers and/or hive bodies is/are above the super or hive body desired. This not only is time consuming and inconvenient, but it results in excessive disturbance of the bees within whatever components are removed and renders difficult any desired working with the hive structure other than the parts thereof immediately on top. Further, while the number of hive bodies and/or supers may be varied as desired in a Langstroth beehive, its arrangement is otherwise quite inflexible.
Accordingly, the objects of the invention include:
1. To provide a beehive construction of modular nature wherein the modules are each of relatively simple and inexpensive construction but capable of assembly in a wide variety of different ways.
2. To provide a beehive construction, as aforesaid, in which the modules can be arranged in a wide variety of specific relationships but wherein all or most thereof are individually accessible without requiring the disturbance of other modules or of the bees in such other modules.
3. To provide a beehive construction, as aforesaid, in which such modules can be freely used in association with presently standard beehive components such as Langstroth or Aspinwall components, without loss of either efficiency or the attainment of desirable characteristics.
4. To provide a beehive construction, as aforesaid, which can be utilized as desired either for comb honey or for extracted honey.
5. To provide a beehive construction, as aforesaid, which is capable of providing for a wide range of desirable details, such as the inhibition of rodent entry, the maintenance of a hive in a well ventilated and dry condition, the ejection therefrom of dead bees and other debris, the incorporation thereinto of Aspinwall anti-swarming features together with other advantages as desired.
6. To provide a beehive construction, as aforesaid, which is feasible to mold from plastics material, if desired, or which can, if preferred, be made in a more conventional manner from wood.
Other objects and purposes of the invention will be apparent to persons acquainted with apparatus of this general type upon reading the following specification and inspection of the accompanying drawings.